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diff --git a/md/article/liberating-cyberspace-rms-interview.md b/md/article/liberating-cyberspace-rms-interview.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2cf286 --- /dev/null +++ b/md/article/liberating-cyberspace-rms-interview.md @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +<!-- pubdate: 20090227 --> +<!-- author: V. Sasi Kumar --> + +# Liberating cyberspace - Interview with Richard M. Stallman, founder, Free Software Foundation, FRONTLINE + +Richard Mathew Stallman needs no introduction to the reading public in +India. He has visited India several times during the last eight years +or so, and has given lectures in many parts of the country. He started +the GNU1 project in September 1983 to create software that gives users +the freedom to use, share, modify and redistribute. Though he was +alone in this task at the beginning, today there are tens of thousands +of programmers world-wide helping to create such software. The GNU +project has inspired a large number of projects for creating Free +Software, and has led to the development of a wide variety of ap- +plications from text editors to office suites, browsers, email +clients, audio and video editors and even 3D animation tools. And this +is beginning to challenge large companies that create proprietary +software. GNU/Linux, formed from the kernel (core) Linux developed +initially by Linus Torvalds and tools like compilers, editors, +etc. developed under the GNU project, is the most popular Free +Operating System and this is being increasingly adopted by +governmental and other agencies in many developed and developing +countries. In India, Free Software has been mandated for government +purposes by the Government of Kerala in its ICT policy, and has become +part of the syllabus of state schools. Several organisations in the +country use Free Software, including LIC and Tamil Nadu’s ELCOT. + +Stallman also developed the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), under +which most Free Software is published, the Free Documentation Licence +for software documentation and the Lesser GPL for certain types of +software. In 1984, he left his job in the Artificial Intelligence Lab +of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology fearing that the +Institute may demand the copyright for his work. In 1985, he started +the Free Software Foundation in Boston, USA, to promote Free +Software. Today, it has its sister organisations in In- dia, Europe +and Latin America. The philosophy of Free Software has led to +movements to free various kinds of information from the severe +restrictions imposed by copyright laws. These include Wikipedia +(<http://wikipedia.org>), Creative Commons +(<http://www.creativecommons.org>) and the Open Access movement in +scientific publication (<http://soros.org/openaccess>). The new +culture of co-operative production of goods of value, though the goods +are vir- tual, is leading people to explore the possibility of an +economy where production will increasingly become ‘peer-to-peer’ and +could take over completely from the capitalist mode of production +eventually. + +Stallman was in India recently to participate in the International +Free Software Free Society conference at Thiruvananthapuram in +December 2008. This interview was done through email after his return. + +**Question**: Twenty five years after you launched the GNU project, +how do you see the progress it has made? What do you feel about its +achievements and failures? + +**Stallman**: The GNU Project has succeeded – we developed the free +GNU operating system and made it work well enough for millions to +use. Of course, not every specific programming project that we +undertook was a success, but the overall project succeeded. It +succeeded so well that it has inspired thousands of other projects to +develop and release free software, which is why a GNU/Linux system +distro today usually contains thousands of application programs. + +However, the GNU Project was just the beginning of the free software +movement’s mission. Our mission is the liberation of cyberspace. That +won’t be finished until proprietary software disappears and all +computer users are free. [Read More (archived)][artcl]. + +[artcl]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110308110501/http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2604/stories/20090227260408500.htm |